The Republican caucus in the House of Representatives can\u2019t count. We saw it when the entire country waited for a week, fifteen full House votes, for them to choose Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. We saw it again, as they dumped poor Kevin (the next Chairman of the MAGA-Republican Party??), and went through candidate after candidate (Scalise, Jordan, et al) until they finally reached Mike Johnson, an unknown with only five terms in the House, as Speaker. He wasn\u2019t around long enough for folks to know \u2013 ignorance has advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now Mike is leading the House on a \u201cvengeance tour\u201d. First it was the \u201cBiden Crime Family\u201d, with all sorts of noise about impeaching the President himself. When their \u201cinvestigation\u201d revealed nothing, they switched to Hunter Biden, surviving son of the President, and a man with a dark past of drug addiction, tax evasion, and idiotic choices in computer repair shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hunter was a mess (seems better now), but out of all of that, the House committees were only able to come up with what the Department of Justice already knew. He evaded income taxes (now all paid with penalties). He, for a week, possessed a gun as a drug addict. And Hunter got jobs that seemed above his \u201cpaygrade\u201d (even with a Georgetown University bachelor\u2019s and a Yale Law degree). There is no question: his employment likely had more to do with his last name and his father, than his experience or expertise. It\u2019s unsavory, almost as ugly as the pictures from the \u201clost\u201d laptop, or the Trump profits from the Old Post Office Hotel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it wasn\u2019t illegal, and neither were the naked pictures Marjorie Taylor Greene got so much pleasure displaying to the Nation in an open committee hearing.\u00a0\u00a0(Is there an underlying theme here:\u00a0\u00a0are MAGA-Republicans really hung up on sex?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when the House thought they had Hunter boxed in \u2013\u00a0\u00a0he refused a subpoena requiring him to come in for a \u201cprivate\u201d interview \u2013 Hunter\u2019s attorney, Abbe Lowell, brought him to an open Committee meeting and demanded an interview in front of the cameras, the Nation, and God.\u00a0\u00a0So while the House could still refer charges to the Justice Department, Hunter\u2019s very public willingness to testify in an open hearing makes criminal charges less likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Mike and \u201cthe gang that couldn\u2019t shoot straight\u201d couldn\u2019t get Joe, and they couldn\u2019t get Hunter.\u00a0\u00a0But they HAD to impeach SOMEBODY, after all the noise, they needed a success.\u00a0\u00a0So they turned their sights on\u00a0Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security.\u00a0\u00a0Mayorkas, (Cal. Berkley, Loyola Law School) a veteran of the Department of Justice, was pursuing the Biden agenda for the Southern border.\u00a0That\u2019s \u201cground zero\u201d for the Trump and MAGA-Republican campaigns:\u00a0\u00a0they are working hard to convince the Nation that all of our troubles are coming over from Mexico with backpacks full of fentanyl and a willingness to work for nothing and vote Democratic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Let\u2019s be clear \u2013 the migrants would LOVE to work, and will work for less; at jobs the vast majority of American citizens won\u2019t do. And the vast majority of fentanyl is coming over the border in semi-truck trailers or in shipping containers on the docks, not the tattered backpacks of migrants fording the Rio Grande or wandering the Great American desert. And even when those migrants do get here, THEY CAN\u2019T VOTE. ONLY US CITIZENS CAN VOTE; and citizenship is an arduous process of tests, recommendations and time).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But there was one minor inconvenient fact about Mayorkas: he hasn\u2019t committed a \u201chigh crime or misdemeanor\u201d, the language of impeachment described in the US Constitution. So \u201cthe gang\u201d is shooting for a lower standard (but another \u201cI\u201d word),<\/em> incompetence in office, claiming that makes him \u201cimpeachable\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now it\u2019s true that impeachment technically is anything that the majority of the House says it is.\u00a0\u00a0So all it came down: could Mike and the \u201cgang\u201d count to the 216 votes needed to pass a Bill of Impeachment to send to the US Senate. (Where the Senate would deal with it appropriately and with dispatch.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s nowhere near the two-thirds majority to convict Mayorkas in the Senate. Senators can count).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was always going to be a near thing. There are only 219 Republicans in the House (they started with 222), and Speaker Mike counted on one Democrat, Al Green, to stay in the hospital after emergency abdominal surgery. But Green decided it was important for his voice to be heard, and was wheeled onto the House floor in his hospital scrubs to cast a last minute vote. The vote total stood at 215 to 215, Green\u2019s vote crucial creating a tie (and therefore a fail). Ultimately one Republican switched his vote for parliamentary reasons, and the final total was 216 against, and 214 for impeachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cgang that couldn\u2019t shoot straight\u201d missed again.\u00a0\u00a0They couldn\u2019t count, in front of the entire Nation, again.\u00a0\u00a0But they blamed Democratic \u201ctrickery\u201d, bringing Green back \u201cfrom the brink\u201d to sink their plan.\u00a0\u00a0Johnson and the gang need to blame somebody.\u00a0\u00a0I guess if it wasn\u2019t Green, it would be their high school math teachers.\u00a0\u00a0They just can\u2019t count, and they don\u2019t learn other repeated lessons either.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t worry, they haven\u2019t given up on Mayorkas yet.\u00a0\u00a0Next week their own hospitalized member, Steve Scalise, will be back from his chemo treatments.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe they\u2019ll be able to find a majority then.\u00a0\u00a0But I wouldn\u2019t count on it \u2013 because clearly, they can\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inconvenient Impeachment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Missed Again<\/h3>\n\n\n\n